Sorrows of the Heart
by Lady Nightshade
Summary: In High School the social classes and the lines that divide and seperate them are explicit and unbreakable. Yet, when a class decides to put on Othello with a modern twist between the classes of society the lines are tested and shattered.
1. The End of Summer's Sweet Freedom

Sorrows of the Heart 1:

The End of Summer's Sweet Freedom

Author's Notes: Yeah, I know another High School Yu-Gi-Oh story. Well in thins one instead of the Popular student denying the "outlawed" relationship between her and an unpopular student; the unpopular student caves under pressure coming from his own group of friends. I mean after all surely they would have had friends that were against the relationship between him and a popular student right?

Yami blinked up at his bedroom ceiling in annoyance; summer had already ended which meant one more final year at Domino High. He pursed his lips and sat up, slamming his fist down on his alarm clock to shut off its insistent ringing. He rubbed his ears in annoyance and climbed out of bed; trading his black, cotton sweatpants and white undershirt for his navy blue school uniform and a matching tank top. He hurried downstairs to find his younger twin brother, Yugi, waiting for him with two of their friends, Joey and Mai; Serenity, Joey's younger sister, by two years, went to an all girls' academy on the other side of town.

Mai it seemed had colored her hair again since last weekend, this time adding little purple streaks into her bangs. Evidently she had stayed with Joey again because she was now sporting one of his uniforms and her wild blonde hair had been pulled into a messy bun with chopsticks, while her bangs hung in her eyes. Joey was wearing the boy's uniform like always and his jacket was unbuttoned and his feet were on the table allowing him to lean back on the chair.

"Your dad get smashed again last night at one of his poker buddies' houses?" asked Yami, taking a seat next to his twin and snagging a free bowl, cereal, and milk.

Joey just grunted in reply and swigged down the black coffee in his cup looking annoyed. Yami exchanged a look with Yugi but let the subject drop; they knew better then to press their blonde friend about matters at home when he was like this.

"Ignore him," said Mai, waving her hand at her boyfriend. "He is annoyed because he didn't realize that the summer reading book wasn't the erotic version of the story."

Yami raised an eyebrow and smirked enjoying the chance to tease his best friend, "hoping to get a few pointers?"

"Shut up," growled Joey.

"Joey get your feet off the table and put that chair back down on all four legs," said Solomon Motuo, coming into the room swatting at the blonde's head. "Mai why aren't you wearing the girl's uniform? Did you grow out of it again? Why aren't your parents buying you more sets? Yugi try to be more outgoing this year; this is your last year at school so make it count. Yami do try to do better in Composition this year, won't you? I am an old man and can't keep track of your papers the way I used to; but that still doesn't mean I will allow for slack. Try not to beat anyone up to badly all of you." This was directed at Yami, Mai, and Joey; then without even pausing for breath he went on. "This is your final year of high school before you go off and I want to see you enjoy it; but not too much to where you forget your already dangerously close to getting below average on a few of your subjects to below average."

"Yes grandfather," said the four teenagers in amusement.

"And don't give me that sass," snapped the old man, swatting all of them with yesterday's rolled up newspaper that had been on the kitchen counter. "Now off to school with you; enjoy the year but keep your studies up. And STAY OUT OF TROBULE ALL OF YOU!"

"Yes sir," said Joey and Yami, giving the old man a mock salute as the four of them grabbed their bags from the entrance way, slipped on their shoes, and sailed out the door.

"The final year of high school," said Yami, stretching his hands above his head and letting his school bag dangle behind his head. "I can not wait to get out of this dump and away from the shallow social structure that is our school."

"Well, I am off to design school when this is over," said Mai, who was good looking and loved clothes enough to be in the popular crowd but choose to remain with her friends instead of hanging out with the shallow people that hid their true feelings behind false smiles and white lies.

"You've already started applying?" asked Joey, surprised by this news. He always knew that his girlfriend loved to design clothes and knew she was talking about going but it never really registered until now.

"No," said Mai. "Don't be silly I haven't started applying yet. I have just been looking around for good design schools; right now I have my sights set on a Design school in Paris and one in New York. Come on Joey its our finally year, surely you have been thinking abour where you wanted to go, right?"

Joey remained silent for the rest of the walk to school letting his friends carry on conversations around him. The fact of the matter was, he hadn't thought much about it at all; he always assumed that he would just end up working at metal working plant his dad used to work at. After all, what skills did he really have besides from doing something that required nothing but hard work and a High School Diploma?

Domino High School loomed above them and the four of them came to a stop at the entrance gate looking up at it. It seemed wierd this being the last year they would set foot instead the gate as students; then the rest of their friends appeared at their side and whatever feelings of remorse they had been feeling drifted away with the wind.

It was lunch time when he first got a look at her, a real good look at her at least. Sure he had seen he, but then again, who wouldn't notice someone like Arora Kendra? She was definately one of the popular students; yet was surprisingly well liked by most of the student body. Her black hair was constantly in a long braid and her dark blue eyes were constantly alert and seemingly happy. She liked being around people; but also liked to have her space with them. She got decent marks in everything she did, with little to great effort depending on the subject, and she was also a cheerleader at the school and was supposedly dating the Captian of the Soccer team.

Yami found her irratatingly happy and optimistic; because that was basically all she seemed to be for the past ten years.

It had happened outside, when she had been walking while reading a book to meet her friends so she could eat her lunch under one of the many trees on the school grounds. He had also been walking and hadn't been paying attention because he had been looking around for Joey and Mai. Then it had happened they had walked into each other; causing Arora to drop her book and her lunch.

"Oh," she said, peering up at him beneath long lashes and low black bangs. "I am sorry Motou-san," she told him, smiling she crouched down and gathered her ruined book and lunch and then continued to head towards her original destination tossing her ruined lunch into the garbage and trying to get the rice and tofu off her book.

Yami was watching her go when the same people he had been looking for walked up to him. "What are ya doin watchin her for?" asked Joey.

"We walked into each other," said Yami, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"So?" asked Joey.

"She is not nearly has dense has I first thought."

"What does that have to do with anything?" asked Joey.

"Nothing," sighed Yami, watching her friends join her.

Joey and Mai exchanged a look and then shrugged their shoulders dismissing it and leading Yami to where the rest of their friends were waiting, seeing how it seemed to change daily over the past two years.

They wouldn't think of the popular girl and her friends until next class, in which would be announced that they would have to put on a play.


	2. Things Are About to Get Interesting

Sorrows of the Heart 2:

Things Are About to Get Interesting

Author's Notes: Yeah, I know another High School Yu-Gi-Oh story. Well in thins one instead of the Popular student denying the "outlawed" relationship between her and an unpopular student; the unpopular student caves under pressure coming from his own group of friends. I mean after all surely they would have had friends that were against the relationship between him and a popular student right?

I just realized that not all of the summary is up so here is the whole summary:

In High School the social classes and the lines that divide and separate them are explicit and unbreakable. Yet, when a class decides to put on Othello with a modern twist between the classes of society the lines are tested and shattered. Who will shatter under the pressure of friends? The Socialite girl in training? Or the Goth boy in way over his head?

Silver Fantasy - Lol, sorry it was so sure but glad it was good enough to make up for it. I plan to I have actually placed her in more stories before this and plan to use her more often, boy that sounded wrong. Traditional, I guess he would be famous, or one of those odd balls that kind of teeter on the lines of being popular and unpopular, but I kind of wanted to do a little something different with this one. I could have sworn I did put the scene separators in. But just to make sure I will start making notes on scene changes.

DreamAnimeKitty - Interesting name and thanks I hope you enjoy the next chapter. Have you read anything of mine before? Your pen name sounds so famillar.

ANAYAS-CREATER - Thanks, I hope to keep it to good

Dahne - That is actually a lot of places

High school, training for the "real world" a place where everywhere you turn you see cliques that bend their rules for no one and nothing. There are the jocks, who depending on who you ask may or may not include the cheerleaders and the dance team; the artsy students, who collaborated with the drama department to create back drops and the occasional costume designs; the drama department, which were really the best students in the Literature class; you also had the nerds, who never studied and still got good grades or they spent their entirely life studying and had no social life what so ever; you also had the popular crowd which was basically the jocks and the drama department and their closest friends; finally you had the outcasts, who were divide up into their only little groups.

Hell School, has it was sometimes called, was almost an entire ecosystem of its own and was quite possibly its own little feudalistic kingdom. Where no one was allowed to date much less mingle with people from other "levels" of their own little world. It was one of the many unspoken rules the teenagers seemed to have. They rank right up there was never date your best friend's ex and your friend's siblings. Still the one about the cliques mixing in anything that wasn't school related; and that included your own family by blood or marriage.

Of course, what fun would it be if the lines remained in tacked, for the most part at least.

Arora Kendra sighed and brushed her bangs behind her ear and away from her eyes. She watched the back of the male, Yami Motou, that she had walked into a couple of minutes ago. She hadn't noticed how tall he had gotten in the past year or so. He was really rather attractive in a sort of bad boy, forbidden fruit sort of way.

He was rather creepy too, he wore a lot of leather and metal, in school or out. Hey Domino was a relatively small town and besides how could you miss someone like Yami in the crowd, especially with the hair.

"Arora!" shouted her best friend, Pernia, breaking her from her thoughts.

Turning back around she headed back up to where Pernia and her somewhat boyfriend, Seto Kaiba, were waiting. Pernia was the daughter of man who was in charge of a branch of a machine and computer company that developed high tech products of the present and for the future. Her mother was a pretty well known Botanist in the scientific community and worked with research on developing cures while running a make up and body company on the side (its kinda like Origins where the make up and body products: bath salts, gels, lotions, etc are made up of plants and other natural materials). Seto Kaiba owned a computer gaming industry, Kaiba Corporations; why he was still in school Arora didn't know and she didn't ask. His parents: blood and adopted, are all dead.

Seto and Pernia meet due to her father because the two companies had been working on something together and Pernia had been waiting for her father in his office one day when Seto had come by for the information he had requested. While, they hadn't gotten off to neither a bad nor good start; there had been a somewhat mutual attraction between the two of them that was mainly based off a strange combination of lust, interest, danger, balance, and polarity. They had slowly agreed on a courtship to cheek the grounds on which they stood with themselves and each other and that had been about a year possibly a month or so longer.

The upper class social world went for a spin when the newspapers "announced it"; because although Seto's company made millions and the youth himself was practically one of the wealthiest people in the world he was still adopted. Of course, Pernia's parents came from two completely different backgrounds: one, the father, from blue blood and money that is both old and new and the other, her mother, coming from a middle, middle class life. So, it was really a case of which was worse.

Ryou, Arora's cousin on her father's side, was with them. Arora was a bit surprised because normally Bakura, being who he is, along with his friends would be with his twin itching to start trouble and shake the social structure of high school to its very roots by hanging out with the popular crowd. Not to mention they got the added bonus of scaring and/or freaking out the Captain of the Soccer team, Arora's ex-boyfriend. Bakura: Arora's cousin, Ryou's older twin brother, and Lord of the Deviants.

Arora finally reached her three friends and the three of them fell into step with each other under their usual tree. Arora sat down and opened her book taking the apple Ryou offered and sharing Pernia's tea. Seto sat beside Pernia and opened his lunch and proceeded to eat and seemingly ignoring his girlfriend who was talking rapidly about a new collection of perfumes and colognes her mother was working on along with Industrial Illusions that would be "trademark" scents of some of the more famous Duel Monster cards. Anyone that didn't know the couple would assume Kaiba was ignoring her but Arora could tell he was listening avidly to her. Ryou was reading the final act in the Othello play they were mock acting in World Literature.

Arora closed her eyes briefly and sighed, life didn't get much better then this.

Across the campus

Yami followed Joey and Mai to their other friends but he could still feel the dark, clear blue eyes of the girl. He shrugged it off and plopped down on the ground in between Joey and Tristian, both with their girlfriends, Mai and Serenity respectively, on either side of them. He stole a glance at Arora and smirked slightly when he realized from this angle he could see up the girl's skirt. Tea scowled at him over her rice ball and rolled her eyes muttering something about the perverseness of boys. Duke and Mako were sitting slightly to the left, but still included in the group, and playing a game of dice, and making up the rules has they went along.

Yami was one of the best game players of the school. He was also one of the few males that women both adored and feared. They adored him because of his dark good looks, his sensuous smile, his mysterious eyes that were neither purple nor red. He could charm a girl with a smile a few well-placed words. Yet they feared him because the same charming smile was used when he was seconds away from beating someone and his eyes constantly hinted at something dark, almost a dangerous knowledge beyond his years. He never hit a female though they were still scared of him because of the leather and silver he always wore; which hinted at bondage, heavy bondage, and the girls weren't that twisted to go into heavy bondage.

Joey was a former gang member that could still hold his on in a down and dirty fight. He and Mai were Polar opposites while being so much the same that they balanced each other out. Mai was a punk girl with rich parents that hardly paid attention to her. They gave her a handsome wad of cash every two weeks. She was saving half of it to get out of the town and the other half she spent on whatever caught her fancy at the time. Joey had the brains he just didn't use them and Mai, well Mai would prefer to use her brains and artistic style to create even more styles.

Tristan used to run with Joey back in the blonde's gang days; which is how he meet Serenity, the younger sister of Joey. Tristan had been helping Joey to his mother's house, he wouldn't dare take the blonde to his father's in this state, when Serenity had been coming into the house following a piano rehearsal. Needless to say, both mother and daughter had been horrified at the site that greeted them and the siblings' mother had refused to allow the blonde back into their father's area; suing, and winning, full custody over their son. The siblings and their significant others had been practically inseparable ever since.

Tea was a friend of Yami's younger twin Yugi and occasionally ran with Yami. She loved dancing but secretly loved Yami even more. She wouldn't tell the youth though because she knew deep down that he never thought of her as anything but a friend. Tea had plans for being a star on the Ballet stage.

Duke and Mako were two friends that were pulled from their various estranged, yet loved families, and into this strange and loving family. Mako's dad was a fisher man, so Mako really ever saw his father, and his mother was a seamstress that worked out of the house and Duke's dad was dead his mother was on the Police Force. Mako wanted to go into the field of Marine Biology and Duke had plans of running a successful gaming company, much like Kaiba's.

Yami pulled his attention away from the girl and back to the conversation at hand. What to do with the rest of their school year and what prank to pull to send the Senior Class away with a bang.

Other side of the campus

Bakura sat on a picnic table his sunglasses hiding his eyes and the shadow of the school building hiding him from teachers and students that would bust him for smoking. Malik and Marik sat on either side of him trying to shove each other off the bench. They both needed to get cat scans. Rishid, their eternal shadow and adopted older brother, watched them wearily wonder if one of them was going to hit the ground and bust his head open. The two Egyptian twins started to get louder and Bakura felt his eyebrow twitch in irritation. He was about to open his mouth to tell them to shove it when both males let out yelps. Bakura turned his head and chuckled at the two females that had joined them: Arashi, Bakura's girlfriend, and Okami, Malik's on again-off again yet never really quit there girlfriend.

Marik thought someone should write a paper on the psychology of Malik and Okami's relationship. Malik thought someone should write one on his twin.

"Knock it off you two," scowled Arashi, nudging Bakura's legs apart and taking a seat on the picnic table's bench between them and using her lap for a lunch table.

Okami didn't say anything she just sat next to Malik, her feet dangling off the end of the picnic table.

The five of them were generally seen together watching everything from the shadows. It was amazing really, what one could learn simply by keeping on eye on things: information that could be used, games to be played, or lives to exploit. Okay, so maybe that was going a bit over board. Still, Bakura and his friends had, had more then their fair share of fun and blackmailed people. They rarely blackmailed people and on the few times they blackmailed a lot of people at once, it was hard to tell who would be next. You always had to watch what you said around shadowy corners and stairwells.

The fact of the matter was, was that they knew more about the school, its students, and its teachers then anyone else and that could be a very dangerous thing.

"You have a strange fascination with your cousin," said Arashi, mock jealousy dripping from her tongue. "Dare I say boarding on infatuation."

Bakura scowled, fighting down a blush and flicked his girlfriend on the ear. He was older then his twin, Ryou, by three hours, and they were older then their cousin, Arora, by four months. Their father's were brothers and worked together on Egyptian digs the majority of the year. Bakura and Ryou's mother had died not long after they were three and so Arora's mother, a registered nurse-midwife, raised them; along with their paternal grandmother. The seven of them shared a house, that was built and designed by Arora's mother's brother, and of course, it was rather large; but not large enough to keep the fighting level down.

Still the three cousins had an odd way of defending each other, Bakura still wondered if part of the reason he and his friends weren't bothered was because of Arora. Or it could be the fact that he had nearly bashed the head in of one of the school football players for grabbing his girl's ass. He did however, know for a fact that no one dared touch Arora and Ryou because of them and of course, Kaiba but the only reason he would defend them was because Pernia was so fond of them.

Kaiba, whether he liked it or not, was whipped and the sad thing was, was that Pernia hadn't even tried; hell, she didn't even want a whipped boyfriend. But she had one and she was too naïve to notice. He wondered what was sadder Kaiba being whipped or the girl not knowing she had him whipped.

He rolled his eyes at it all and tore into his girl friend's confiscated apple. He had to eat something before the bell rang.

World Literature

"Hello class," chirped the perky and slightly senile teacher of World Literature. "I, along with the rest of my department, have decided that the three World Literature classes will get together and act out a play. Now, auditioning is mandatory. Oh shut up, don't groan! You will receive twenty points for auditioning and if you make a part in the play you will receive bonus points. Do you have a question Mr. Wheeler?"

"What play are we acting out?" drawled the blonde youth.

The teacher, Mrs. Chang, smiled sweetly, a little too sweetly, and she gave her answer, "we will be acting out a modernized version of Othello. Of course, this one won't deal with race; but with something else that is equally important to bring to light in our society."

"And what would that be?" asked Yami smirking.

"It will be between different societies and instead of the leading man being the odd one out, so to speak, it will be the leading lady that is the needle in the haystack."

"They've really turned the play around haven't they?" whispered Arora, to no one in particular.

"Can't wait," smirked Mai, "this should be fun."

"The auditions," cut in Mrs. Chang. "Will be at the end of the week in the theater, I expect you all to be there and seating in the middle of the left seats. I will call role and anyone who doesn't show up or is not on time will not get the twenty points. Is that clear?"

"Yes Mrs. Chang," said the students, in varying degrees of total boredom and enthusiasm.

"Good," smiled the teacher, opening up the _Othello_ play book. "Now, will the actors from yesterday please pick up where we left off?"

The students opened their play books and the ones that had been reading yesterday stood up and began to recite their lines and class went on as usual.


End file.
